could you We have a lot of Protestant viewers yeah like s a surprising amount of Protestant viewers many of them are looking for a reason to become Catholic they just have some intellectual hurdles they hope to overcome and I think one of them is indulgences how would you explain indulgences to a Protestant who's extremely wary of them right yes uh I mean the first thing I would say is you know Protestants understandably I get this i was there are weary wary about anything that's not explicit in scripture but what I would say is the the distinctions on which indulgences are based are actually present in scripture okay so you know for us as Catholics you know we know that and it's not just for us as Catholics like let me get back to what I said this is just Christian truth when we sin it has a double effect uh sin uh incurs guilt uh which is like moral culpability that is an impediment in our relationship with God but it also creates damage okay sometimes this the sin of our damage is even in the material order and it's appropriate and even necessary to make reparation of some kind like pay for whatever it was you got drunk you crashed your car into somebody's house you got to pay you need to morally make that right but it's not just the material order that's affected by our sins but it's also the moral order something that's we can't directly see but is nonetheless more real than what we can see so sin creates guilt and it also creates what the church traditionally calls temporal punishment which is uh this damage to the moral order i want to stay on that topic just for a moment because I I want to make sure we we we are following the argument and that we're in agreement with you because I think that's right you know I I I would imagine that all sincere Christians would admit okay if I got drunk and I crashed my car into somebody else's car and then I wake up and I repent of that and I believe that I've been forgiven I think most serious Christians would say obviously I want to do what I can to make reparations right but in the moral order can you help convince me why that's the case i would imagine a Protestant saying something like "Yeah Christ has has paid the debt for my sins and any damage that I have committed to myself in the spiritual realm has been made up for by my repentance and his forgiveness." Yes yeah no I understand that but in actuality our sins do damage to our soul and that that's the primary place where uh the the temporal effects of our sins is felt it's actually that it it disorders your soul and that needs to be healed so so addiction might be a good example of that right a Protestant would understand this if I watch pornography several hours a day for several years and I repent of it and I'm forgiven of it that's great it's not as if oh now I have no inclination to commit this act of sexual uh personal abuse for uh what's what's the word uh uh not masturbation i like the old word for it uh fornication abuse abuse self abuse self abuse i think we should use more delicate i like Well it's more delicate but it also shows the disgust we ought to have at such an act right right yeah all right so I think that could be an example how we see that we disrupt ourselves spiritually morally okay yeah and and you know I think it goes I think that's the primary the primary damage is is to our own soul but I do think it affects others as well okay okay because we're living in the communion of saints you know what would be an argument for that or how would you share well you know I I think that um uh you know my my progress in virtue my growth in virtue and um my growing closer to the Lord has kind of a positive spiritual impact on my children and on my wife that's not just um material or example my behavior example behavior is a big part and I'm not denying that but I think it's not it's it's more than that it's it's not just kind of physicalist and material and you know uh reductionistic i think it's I I really think it's in in the moral order um and uh and likewise when we when we capitulate to sin and so on uh I think at the very least it doesn't help our brothers and sisters uh in the faith and maybe in a sense it could even you know uh weaken you know so you know and folks may have different uh views on that but uh but I think it it I think there is an objective existent um spiritual and moral order and when we sin and it does damage that needs to be healed it needs to be corrected it needs to be um you know fixed and it's primarily in our own soul but then like I say I think you know and uh you can you know get a a sacrament sacontologist in here like Larry Fineold and he can correct you know uh my my P's and Q's on that but um in any event uh indulgences are intended to correct that disorder that's introduced into uh the moral order by our by our sins and into our souls and you see this already in uh in the Old Covenant because interestingly and I always wondered about this in Leviticus 4-6 there's actually two kinds of sacrifices uh established if you sin one is unhelpfully called the sin uh offering and the other is unhelpfully called the guilt offering and I say unhelpfully because actually the sin offering seems to be intended for guilt and the so-called guilt offering really seems to be intended for reparation and it's to me to me it's fascinating because when you sin you know you had to offer the sin offering but then you also had to offer the guilt offering and the guilt offering was an offering to God that accompanied uh reparations that you might do in the material order so if you had stolen or done some other kind of thing that damaged your neighbor you had to do that in the you had to repair that in the material order make a kind of material reparation but then you also had to offer the sacrifice and that's what suggests to me that you know what the pedagogy of this was to teach the Israelites that you don't it's not just a material damage that you've done that there's a kind of spiritual damage that needs to be healed that needs to be fixed you know however you want to describe it so so already in the old covenant you see these sacrifices that express this distinction between the double effect of of sin that the guilt and the temporal punishment that results from uh from our sin and uh so there there there's a as I say there's a biblical basis for this distinction so could we quickly if you think it necessary define what an indulgence is it just occurred to me we haven't even said what we mean yeah and and this is a big this is a huge area of misunderstanding because the word indulgence in English has completely changed its meaning such that when you when people hear you know oh the church offers indulgences the first thing that comes to mind and this is what I grew up believing was that an indulgence was the church giving you permission to indulge right to indulge in beer or indulge in something else you indulge in some kind of sin or some kind of you know disordered passion and that the whole point was that you you paid a sum you know you you you give father 300 bucks and then you get an indulgence to go you know have a bender or something like this uh and and that's somehow okay and and that's of course completely just a complete misunderstanding and it comes because the word has changed its meaning if you go back and and do the history of this the the term indulgencia in Latin meant an act of mercy or an act of clemency okay so I'm not even sure you know do we have a word for an act of clemency or um an act of mercy i don't know we don't quite have something that I can think of immediately in English for that but that's what it was was an indulgence it was an an act of clemency like if if you did something terrible and and the king just forgave you and said it's it's okay and I'll take you back into my employee and I'll I'll allow you to keep your position even though you ran away scared in battle or something like that that was an indulgencia that was an act of clemency towards you so so that has um the the the very term has completely changed its meaning into something else in English which is very misleading but the idea what is an indulgence an indulgence is a a dispensation of mercy or kind of like a a gift of mercy from what's called the the church's treasury of merits it's kind of you know we have this idea of the communion of the saints that we commun in spiritual goods so if we use an analogy of like a a treasury or like a storehouse then you can think of all of the merits of the saints and the merits of our Lord the merits of our lady all these things that have value remember how Jesus says "Store up treasure in heaven." Well what does that mean you know well that that spiritual good that that spiritual merit that has been gained by our Lord and all his saints by by the whole Christ Christ and his members okay i was because I was about to push back on that and say surely whatever Christ merited was infinite so why do we even need to talk about the merits of Mary or St jerome or whoever because they're all part of him you know remember what what our Lord says to St paul you know why are you persecuting me he doesn't say why are you persecuting my members so that's that's the concept of the whole Christ in in uh in theology christ and his members we're all joined to him we become his extensions it's even in Protestantism you know they'll say uh your neighbor knows no Jesus except you you know you are the face of Jesus to your neighbor right so you got to do evangelism and you got to set a good good example etc you are a Christian you know another Christ st hosa Maria says "We are alterrist ipsa christrist." Very dramatic statement that means we are other Christs we are Christ himself okay wow you know but it's true because in the Eucharist we take his body into ourselves and he incorporates us into himself and like wow that is that's huge but I I want to get stay on stay on task here so So that you know Jesus says store up treasure in heaven so what is that treasure that's in heaven it's it's the it's the merits and the spiritual goods of of of the whole Christ and the church who is Mrs jesus okay the church who is the spouse of Christ just like all of my money is at the disposal of my wife Don Bergsba and uh and she has full authority to go and write a check out of the bank account and draw all my resources so the church as the spouse of Christ has a power to write a write a check on the on the treasury of merits and give it to her children to help them to be healed of of the disorder that they've introduced into their own souls and into the I would say the broader moral order by their sins and so that's what an indulgence is it's an act of mercy that helps to heal our souls okay good good yeah now I think though when modern Protestants hear indulgence or think of it I don't know if they would think what you thought as as a Protestant i think what they would think is this is the church unnecessarily making herself the middleman um and then it also plays into Catholics have to work for mercy where it's like all of this is unnecessary if if if the death and resurrection of Christ is sufficient then I don't need a middleman to decide whether or not to dispense mercy I can go directly to him and he's powerful enough to do what he said he would do right and and yet in the scriptures in the very word of God uh God insists on using middlemen uh you know he tells Peter "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." When we go through the book of Acts we see all these healings that are done by the laying on of hands of the apostles we see the Holy Spirit given by the laying of hands and you could say "Well God could just heal all those people directly he didn't need to send Peter he didn't need to cure people by Peter's shadow he didn't need to cure people by the handkerchiefs of Paul he didn't need to dispense the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands of the apostles god could have just done zap zap zap you know and done all that directly and yet he doesn't yeah and yet he uses the medium of the church he uses the body of Christ and one of the major points of the book of Acts is that the the very uh the very acts of power that emanated from the physical body of Jesus during his ministry continue to emanate from the mystical body of Christ as we see the church grow in the book of acts so the very same kinds of miracles Jesus goes you know up into an upper room and and and takes the little girl's hand and says "Tella cum," you know and little girl arise and he he raises the little girl from the dead and uh St peter in Acts chapter 9 does the same thing with the woman named Tabitha i've always been struck like Talea Tabitha i'm like is there some connection there i don't know probably not but but the point is Tabitha this this woman who's died and he goes up and he he takes her hand he lifts her same kind of miracle um likewise with Anias in that very chapter uh St peter you know Anias is bedridden in in Acts 9 and uh and Peter tells him to get up and and take up his pallet and walk and like well deja vu all over again right we saw that in the Gospels with our Lord and so what's the point the point is that um from Peter and not especially from Peter but the other apostles as well who are the body of Christ as we see in Paul's great you know conversion episode where he's told that he's persecuting Jesus directly so from from the body of Christ which is the apostles these great acts of power are being unleashed and this is the way God has chosen to work um and and that's the mystery of God's will yes God could do everything immediately that is to say without a mediator and sometimes he does and I believe I've seen some like immediate acts of God where God just went and did stuff um but his usual uh his usual means is to is to work through his church and to work through his saints and work through the members of his body and I would say he does that in order to incorporate us into his divine work because as a loving father love is diffusive of itself love wants to share itself he wants to invite us in and to participate into the divine nature and since the divine nature is merciful and and lifegiving and and charitable you know he incorporates us into allows us to be the ministers of that divine charity so that we can participate in the divine life and this is what it is like to share life with others you know you know so those in holy orders get a real privilege you know to be dispensers of divine life and and to enter deeply into um you know the mystery of God's God's own life in that way and but we participate the rest of us participated in it as well you know according to our baptism and confirmation etc so anyway did that yeah that's it's beautiful what you said and I love what you had to say there about the mediation thanks very much for watching that clip you can click the link below if you want to watch the full interview and don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel